Robinson Crusoe | Page 5

and did not like it, I

would go no more; and I would promise, by a double diligence, to
recover the time that I had lost.
This put my mother into a great passion; she told me she knew it would
be to no purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject; that he
knew too well what was my interest to give his consent to anything so
much for my hurt; and that she wondered how I could think of any such
thing after the discourse I had had with my father, and such kind and
tender expressions as she knew my father had used to me; and that, in
short, if I would ruin myself, there was no help for me; but I might
depend I should never have their consent to it; that for her part she
would not have so much hand in my destruction; and I should never
have it to say that my mother was willing when my father was not.
Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet I heard
afterwards that she reported all the discourse to him, and that my father,
after showing a great concern at it, said to her, with a sigh, "That boy
might be happy if he would stay at home; but if he goes abroad, he will
be the most miserable wretch that ever was born: I can give no consent
to it."
It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose, though, in the
meantime, I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling to
business, and frequently expostulated with my father and mother about
their being so positively determined against what they knew my
inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where I went
casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement at that time;
but, I say, being there, and one of my companions being about to sail to
London in his father's ship, and prompting me to go with them with the
common allurement of seafaring men, that it should cost me nothing for
my passage, I consulted neither father nor mother any more, nor so
much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they
might, without asking God's blessing or my father's, without any
consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God
knows, on the 1st of September 1651, I went on board a ship bound for
London. Never any young adventurer's misfortunes, I believe, began
sooner, or continued longer than mine. The ship was no sooner out of

the Humber than the wind began to blow and the sea to rise in a most
frightful manner; and, as I had never been at sea before, I was most
inexpressibly sick in body and terrified in mind. I began now seriously
to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was overtaken by the
judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my father's house, and
abandoning my duty. All the good counsels of my parents, my father's
tears and my mother's entreaties, came now fresh into my mind; and
my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness to
which it has since, reproached me with the contempt of advice, and the
breach of my duty to God and my father.
All this while the storm increased, and the sea went very high, though
nothing like what I have seen many times since; no, nor what I saw a
few days after; but it was enough to affect me then, who was but a
young sailor, and had never known anything of the matter. I expected
every wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the ship
fell down, as I thought it did, in the trough or hollow of the sea, we
should never rise more; in this agony of mind, I made many vows and
resolutions that if it would please God to spare my life in this one
voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go
directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship again while I
lived; that I would take his advice, and never run myself into such
miseries as these any more. Now I saw plainly the goodness of his
observations about the middle station of life, how easy, how
comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been exposed to
tempests at sea or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like a
true repenting prodigal, go home to my father.
These wise and sober thoughts continued all the while the storm lasted,
and indeed some time after; but the next